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Salad

Orange Salad

A jellied dressing made from sugar, egg white, gelatin, and citrus, served over sliced oranges and bananas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine sugar, egg white, and egg shell in a bowl and beat until well mixed.

  2. Heat the mixture to boiling, simmer for 5 minutes, then strain.

  3. If desired, add grated orange and lemon peels.

  4. Soak gelatin in cold water for 1 hour; add to the mixture before heating.

Serve

  1. Serve the dressing over sliced oranges and bananas, layered alternately.

  2. Keep the jellied dressing on ice until ready to serve.

  3. For a variation, squeeze lemon juice over orange slices and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Coagulates as it heats, trapping cloudy particles so the dressing can be strained clear.
Gelatin
Sets the dressing into a jelly that holds its shape over the fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the tartness of the citrus.
Sherry wine or orange juice
Adds liquid and fruity flavor to the dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit.

The step that matters

Heating and straining the mixture. As the mixture heats, the egg white and shell coagulate and trap cloudy particles. Straining afterward removes them, leaving a clear dressing.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, lemon, gelatin, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pineapplefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon, gelatin, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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